Iao and Leroy's excellent Japanese snowboarding adventure

Get the DVD – Out Now!
Follow the adventures of Leroy and Iao – 2 Australian snowboarders – as they explore the mountains of Furano, Kamui and Tomamu in Hokkaido, Japan.
Hear from local Furano residents and other travellers as they explain the allure of the region and their love of the snow and Japan. Featured interviews include Ken McBride, Mari Yamazaki, Kojima Hiasyuki, Rumi Itagaki, Djan Aston – as well as many other locals and travellers. Running time 81 Minutes.

Arriving back in Furano last night was almost like a home coming for us. Kojima san gave us warm welcom at Pension Snow Flake and showed us to our near palacial room followed by a quick tour or the pension. Far exceeding our expectations, pension Snow Flake is spacious, clean, has the cafe next door as the common area and amazing staff (a very special thanks Chikka for our breakfast this morning!!)

As promised, we made a B-line straight to R’s for a doria. It had been 12mths, but worth the wait. About 50m away from R’s is Ajito Bar, so we popped in there to see our friends Mikki and Tomo. It was like we had never left and when Nii san (the owner) came in…he nearly had a cow and shouted us a beer. We had only planned on having a few beers on getting there after dinner……3am we ended up leaving. Massive night.

We ended up hitting the slopes at 11am and having not done any snowboarding in the last year, we were surprisingly up to speed and covered the whole mountain before lunch – a customary katsu curry at the Downhill Cafe t the top of Furano Zone. Finishing up as solid day at around 4:30pm, we stopped by the Furano Tourism office to book in trips to Kamui on Tuesday and Tomamu on Wednesday. We headed to the new Furano Prince Hotel of an onsen and then back to R’s for a doria and back to Snow Flake.

There hasn’t been the traditional mega dumps of snow this season and levels are down considerably. It’s been snowing lightly tonight, however it’s been cranking thumb nail size flakes for the last coupla hours…shaping up to be a massive powder day at Kamui tomorrow. Planning on taking out the new GPS so stay tuned for a post traking our every movement.

After three full days and nights in Tokyo, we’re ready to get snowboarding.

Tomorrow we’ll fly to Sapporo and then bus it 3hrs to Furano. ETA of 6-6:30pm. Monday will see our firstboarding session at Furano in a year, so we’re hoping that we wont be too rusty.

For our 21 days in Fuirano we’ll get a lift pass which will work out to around 2600Y per day instead of 4200Y. It won’t cover lift passes at Kamui or Tomamu, but the convenience of not having to buy a pass every day will still see us well ahead.

It’s been quite a hectic year. We realeased the trailer for “Snowboard In Japan – Furano 2010″ earlier this year, and have been working on the final cut. We don’t have a definitive release date, but expect it to hit the shelves of Amazon some time in December or January.

We have some excellent news – our Furano trip for 2011 is booked. This season, we’re staying with Kojima San and the Snowflake crew at Pension Snowflake. Kojima and some of his snowflakes featured in our Snowboard In Japan 2010 DVD, and we had so much fun, that we just had to book our 2011 accommodation with them.

The 2011 trip is set to take in 4 days and 3 nights in Tokyo. We’re taking up lodgings at the excellent Ninja Hostel in Asakusabashi in Tokyo. It’s our first stay here, but judging by the online reviews and photos – we’re in for a blast. 4 days isn’t a long time, but we’re hoping to cram in as much as possible including karaoke, shopping, visiting some temples, procuring some authentic Japanese aikido gi’s and of a course a few Japanese sakes and beers. Shinjuku and Shibuya are high on our list of stops along with Ueno and Tokyo.

Once we leave Tokyo, we’re headed to New Chitose airport on Hokkaido to jump on a bus straight to Furano. This season we’re planning to hit the slopes of Kamui and Tomamu every week. We’re also planning a trip to the fabulous Asahidake. In Furano village, we’ve been hankering for a Doria from R’s restaurant all year, and of course can’t wait to hang out with Ni, Tommo, Miki and the crewat Bar Ajito. In town, we’re looking forward to another visit to Kitsusuki and a fun-filled evening of live music and friendly locals.

There is so much to see and do in Furano, and frankly, the 2 weeks we spent there in early 2010 weren’t enough. Things we missed out on last year which are high on the agenda this year include a visit to the winery, the Furano cheese factory, a Friday night with our mate Ken McBride at Bridges in downtown Furano, ice fishing, snow shoeing, a visit to the ice festival in Sapporo and a couple more onsen tours.

Furano, truly is a magical place. The locals are so welcoming, and by the time you leave, it feels like you are leaving family behind. We captured a lot of the charm and wonder of Furano (as well as some great snowboarding action) in our DVD Snowboard In Japan – Furano 2010. This year, we’re taking a different approach. We’re not doing a full-blown DVD production, as we want to enjoy the powder and chillax a bit more. We do have some filming planned though, so keep your eyes peeled for the next installments on this blog.

Thanks to a recommendation from Gary Vaynerchuk, the author of ‘Crush It!’ and founder of Wine Time TV, one of the first and most successful video blogs on the internet, we are now distributing our videos on www.TubeMogul.com

TubeMogul.com allows you to distribute your content via various online channels, taking the leg work out of distribution for you, and getting you and your videos more exposure online.

Jess form TubeMogul.com was kind enough to increase our upload limit to allow the upload of our trailer. Thanks Jess!

Well we have been hard at work reviewing and tagging all the footage we shot for our Snowboard In Japan documentary in Furano 2010.

As you can probably imagine, this is a very time-consuming process. Deciding what is quality, and what won’t make it past the cutting room floor is both a cathartic and heart rending experience as you realise that shot that took you 1 hour and 10 takes just isn’t up to par.

To give you an idea of how the editing process takes place, we produced a trailer for Snowboard In Japan this evening. The total running time for the trailer is just over 4 minutes. This video took over 3 hours to assemble. This includes shot selection, editing, sequencing, audio editing, addition of soundtrack, adding transitions, adding titling and producing the final exported video.

Here’s another sneak peek at Snowboard In Japan - Furano 2010 The Trailer

Okay, I admit it - I’m a doria addict. What is a doria you ask? It’s a baked rice dish popular in Japan. I am lead to believe that it has Italian origins, and if you google ‘doria’ you will find some good recipes. Think Spanish paella, and you will be getting close to what we are dealing with here.

In our time at Furano, we spent probably 7 or 8 of our 12 nights at R’s restaurant opposite Bar Ajito, and once I tried the doria the first night, I never deviated. R’s also make a great omelette curry, another favourite Hokkaido staple. Once I convinced Iao of the virtues of the doria,he also became a massive fan. In short, if you are in Furano - goto R’s and order a doria!

Upon my return to Australia, I googled ’doria’ to get the recipe. I found something close here which is a great low fat recipe, but it seemed a bit complex to me, and was missing some of the essential elements that made R’s dorias so oishii (delicious ).

I decided to make my own version of the doria. Forgive the approximate quantities and method, but this should give you a good start to replicating the famous R’s doria:

Ingredients

2 medium potatoes

1.5 cups brown rice

500 grams minced chicken

2 portobello mushrooms

1 small tin of corn

1 small packet of cherry tomatoes

1 onion

1 small jar of pasta sauce

10 slices salami

2 eggs

100 grams low fat grated cheese

Method

Brown chicken mince and onion in a pan with some olive oil. Slice the mushrooms and add after 2 minutes. Cook until all ingredients are cooked, then turn off heat.

Boil rice for 40 minutes.

Boil potatoes for 20 minutes.

When all ingretients are ready, add rice to the bottom of a large baking dish.

Add chicken, onion and mushrooms to top of rice.

Cover entire ingredients with the pasta sauce.

Chop potatoes into quarters and add to dish spacing evenly.

Add corn, tomatoes and salami evenly throughout dish.

Cove entire dish with grated cheese.

Crack 2 eggs on top of cheese.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Voila! You now have an authentic replica of an R’s doria! Of course nothing can substitute for the real thing, and I’ll be back for more in 2011.